


A love letter written on skin

by ChocoChipBiscuit



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Cunnilingus, DA Remix Fest 2017, F/F, Fanfiction, Oral Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-16
Updated: 2017-08-16
Packaged: 2018-12-16 03:10:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11820018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChocoChipBiscuit/pseuds/ChocoChipBiscuit
Summary: Josephine shares fan-written erotica with Cassandra.





	A love letter written on skin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Stonestrewn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stonestrewn/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Writing love all over](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3693584) by [Stonestrewn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stonestrewn/pseuds/Stonestrewn). 



> Happy Remix Fest! *blows streamer* I strongly recommend reading the inspo fic if you haven't already because it's an absolute joy and delight, and while this may technically not actually be a remix because it ended up being more of an epilogue to the original story, I hope this stays in the spirit of the challenge. <3
> 
> Also, Cassandra is trans in this story, as in the original. I am not trans and appreciate constructive criticism or feedback on my depiction of her or any other aspects of the fic.

Cassandra rolls her shoulders, grunts as she slowly uncracks knuckles, jaw, spine. Exhales the tight-knit tension of her ribs, traveling rung by rung down the ladder of her spine; inhales the wet-fresh smell of hot water and flowers, some sweet floral and citrus note that she cannot identify. Josephine has exquisite taste, as always, and could probably identify every component of the fizzing bath concoction, but Cassandra can only rely on her own feeble nose.

It does not help that she currently reeks of sweat and leather.

Josephine tsks softly, kisses the pulse of Cassandra’s wrist and gives a butterfly-tickle of her eyelashes against Cassandra’s cheek, standing on tip-toe to kiss the base of her throat. Josephine is golden, as always, caught in the glitter of the sinking sun through the window, the warm brown of her skin glowing against her jewelled necklace and dangling earrings.

Maker, but Josephine is beautiful.

And that, perhaps, is the last thing that Cassandra needs to fully release the tensions of the day, to sink fully into the gift of Josephine’s presence.

Tactfully, Josephine does not ask after the trivialities of Cassandra’s day, the weeks spent on campaigns of swords and words and the terse reports given in Cassandra’s blocky handwriting, her quill gouging deep furrows in the paper. The Inquisition lives, the Seekers remake themselves, and the Divine sits in power. Broad strokes of fact, uncolored. Cassandra does not wish to dwell on those any more than she has to, instead seeks to surround herself in the comforts of bath, lover, and… book?

Josephine smiles brightly, pressing a small chapbook into Cassandra’s hands. It is of cheap paper, so thin the letters bleed from one page to the next, the paper cover with a crude woodcut of an armored woman standing with her hair in the wind—

“This is not— surely this is not the next installment of Swords and Shields, is it?” Cassandra whispers, all thoughts of bath and bed now utterly dissolved into a morass of sentiment and— yes, tremulous excitement, her heart fluttering against her ribs like some silly bird.

Josephine shakes her head, smile softening into one of apology. “No, but it is a collection of stories written by fans of the series. It is a somewhat niche market, but oh, Cassandra! There is _joy_ in these pages, when I saw this, I could not help but think of you! And—” She claps her hand to her mouth, eyes dancing with glee despite her dismayed pretense. “I confess, I could not bear to wait until your return to read them myself. So… I did!”

“What sort of stories?” Cassandra asks, hardly daring to open the book. Hardly daring to _breathe_ on the book, as if the paper might disintegrate in her hands and reveal itself to be nothing but an errant thought, some idle daydream made manifest.

“I can tell you as you bathe,” Josephine says gently, and Cassandra blushes down to her marrow, but puts the book aside— gently, reverently, on a mound of towels that serve as impromptu dais— to pull off her clothing, to sink into the water’s warm embrace and to submit to Josephine’s gentle hands at her head, seated behind her so as to undo Cassandra’s braid and to comb it to something beyond its bedraggled state. Strange to think undressing had once been so fraught, with Cassandra so aware of the differences between their bodies, with Josephine small and round and lush in every way that Cassandra is not. Any new lover is an undiscovered country, but Josephine is _home_.

Josephine’s voice is sweet, lilting. Almost analytical in her discussions, as if she were debating the merits of a political candidate rather than a matter so dear to both their hearts. “Many of the stories explore the characters in more depth than, alas, our dear Varric bothers— and that is to the collection’s benefit. The predominant theme is relationships, romantic and otherwise, with a few lovely character studies and other pieces that I would deem acceptable for general audiences.”

“General audiences? Does that mean—” and Cassandra curses herself for being a foolish, foolish woman, but even in the privacy of her own bath, with her own beloved, she cannot help dropping her voice to a shocked whisper. “Does that mean the others— are erotic in nature?”

Josephine giggles, kissing the cap of Cassandra’s skull, her fingers shaking with mirth. “Not all of them. But a good portion, yes.”

“Does— does Varric know?”

“He more than knows, he _approves_!” Josephine’s laughter winds high and trilling, hands splashing into the bath. “He even claims to have written one of the stories himself, under a pseudonym.”

Cassandra sits in stunned silence as Josephine rebraids her hair and wraps it back in place across her crown.

“Why would so many people choose to write such silly, smutty stories?” Cassandra finally says, every syllable a stone across her numb lips.

“For much the same reason as we imagine Abeline and Jocasta, I would think.” Josephine dips her hands into the bath, then massages Cassandra’s shoulders with wet hands, thumbs kneading into the knots buried deep. “It is natural to love the characters, so much so as to wish them happy endings and tomorrows. A sort of epilogue, a way to fill in the gaps when a scene fades to black.”

“But Varric _doesn’t_ fade to black,” Cassandra whispers, shame blotching its way across her face and down her neck.

“No, but he focuses on his own favorites throughout the series. Which means those of us who favor noncanonical pairings must fill in our own gaps.”

Cassandra sits.

Digests.

This may be a book of airy nothings that gives nothing of value to the world, no more so than Cassandra’s own ridiculous adoration of tasteless literature or ill-considered attempts at writing a story, but perhaps— what it gives is joy, magnified and reflected.

Perhaps that is all the permission Cassandra needs.

“Thank you,” she says, because she had even more shamefully forgotten to thank Josephine for such a thoughtful gift. Sentiment chokes her voice, clots her speech. “This is a gift beyond what I had ever imagined. I only brought you chocolates, not—”

“But I _do_ love chocolates!” Josephine protests, and the next half hour is spent luxuriating in the bath, the brandy pralines slowly melting across her tongue as Josephine picks through the stories and reads them in her sweet, clear voice. She drips love like honeycomb, coating every story with such gloss that even if Cassandra did not love them already she would be tugged by this clear love of story and character, allowing her to forgive such minor flaws as details of characterization or the occasional typo that leads Josephine to stutter. Cassandra even forgives the occasional confusion of limbs and hands when Josephine reads the more explicit scenes, though she purses her lips when realizing that apparently Abeline somehow gained a third hand somewhere in the middle of a tryst.

“So if one hand is twisted in her lover’s shirt, and the other is braced against the pillow, what is this third hand rise up to stroke her beloved’s face?”

Josephine flutters her hand, paper rustling. “Details that a proofreader or editor may have caught. Trivial, in the sweep of things. Particularly considering that none of the authors were paid for this.”

“Really?” Cassandra asks, dismayed.

“Oh yes,” Josephine says matter-of-factly, albeit wistful. “It’s quite explicit in the forward. None of the contributors see a penny of profit, since Varric owns the copyright.”

Cassandra mulls that over until she finally rises from the bath, dripping. Josephine helps her towel off, Cassandra’s skin still damp and smelling of flowers as she tugs Josephine to their shared bed. Cassandra is not so bold as she might like, knows herself to be simple, bordering on stodgy in her tastes, but is inspired by Josephine’s own fearless reading of the texts. The stories are not over, no— but perhaps no story is truly over while its memory lives. The heart remembers, the breath remembers, every chamber of her being resonates to this fundamental truth.

Cassandra is no longer the clumsy lover Josephine had patiently taught when they were first learning one another’s bodies, no longer the shy girl-woman afraid to remove her drawers for another’s gaze, but moves with a familiar certainty to press Josephine gently into the covers, to kiss her mouth with heads tilted to avoid bumping their noses, then to undo the tangle of ribbons and buttons and stays that keep Josephine wrapped like the most beautiful of gifts.

Josephine spills gold in every gesture, a wink of fabric and the rings glittering on her fingers, laughs as she squirms out of her clothes and parts her knees, her breasts and belly jiggling in soft billows of flesh and rippling the dimples on her thighs. Cassandra kneels between her legs like something holy, licks her fingers and traces those wet fingers over a brown nipple, down the ribs, into the dip of the navel and follows after with tongue, with lips. Cassandra is no poet, but she writes love all over in fingertip-tracings, an illuminated manuscript of touch and texture. Her own need is a gently throbbing thing, easily ignored for now as Cassandra writes, over and over. She blows cool air on the skin after, whispers of touch and friction to raise prickles of flesh; a lover’s trick that Cassandra would never have dreamt of on her own, but one patiently taught to her by Josephine, and— yes, dare she say it?— _smut_.

Of course, all love letters— and what is this, but a love letter writ on skin?— need a tender opening, so Cassandra kisses breasts and belly and thighs, slides into the romantic body as her fingers find the cleft of Josephine’s wetness, thumb dragging into the thick curls before her mouth follows. As silly or cliche as the alphabet might be when written in tongue, it does serve its own purpose; it allows Cassandra to find the familiar shapes that make Josephine sigh, that make Josephine squirm.

So Cassandra laps her tongue in gentle rings, long curlicues of ‘O’s that draw out Josephine’s own _ohs_ and sighs. She squeezes her hands under Josephine, grips that lovely spill of generous flesh on Josephine’s derriere— ‘buttocks’ seems too impersonal, and ‘ass’ is certainly _not_ what to call a lady— and blunts her teeth with lips to tug into Josephine’s labia, to dip her tongue and taste Josephine’s core. It’s a heady, musky aroma, fluids thick and creaming onto Cassandra’s tongue, blending with the taste of salt on her skin and the flowers from the bath, its own rich concoction of smell-memory-taste and Josephine laughs, fluttering like a blossom on the breeze as her gold chains click and jangle in their own windchime symphony.

This is the romantic body, the bulk of the text: all the ways to write love, over and over. The specifics of love and general feeling, falling into familiar patterns with Josephine’s knees over Cassandra’s shoulders, her lip between her teeth as she squeaks and gasps and Cassandra pulls herself away just long enough to say, “Please, please— let me hear you, let me feel you,” so that Josephine lets loose a long and wailing sigh, hips arched high and heels digging into Cassandra’s back, her hair haloed in stray tendrils and wisps and Cassandra’s mouth shapes breath and devotion and finally, finally, Josephine cries and comes undone like waves and salt, a laughing spray of joy— and Andraste, what a beautiful, wonderful thing, but Josephine _laughs_ when she comes and it’s something Cassandra’s never even _heard_ of before but she loves it, loves it because it’s Josephine. Cassandra stops only when Josephine’s white-knuckled fists fall limp, when Josephine’s body sags and her weight sinks heavy in the mattress, body awash in afterglow.

Of course, no love letter is complete without a closing: kisses, love, a promise of more. Always and forever.


End file.
